A Betrayal and a War
by QUeenVi3515
Summary: Reminiscences and fragmented recollections from many years ago, they surface and slice up my consciousness like shards of broken glass.


An exercise in drabble.

A Betrayal and a War.

Walter POV, POV, slight angst, vignette, blood and gore, character death,

Walter, Integra, Girlycard, Alucard, Arthur, Original character.

The gentility was pure, hard and cold- you could see it immediately, it radiated from her very presence. Tall, slim and with perfect symmetrical facial features; her hair, long and ash-blond.

Save for her light dark skin, It is a look that reflected generations of selective breeding.

I remember her mother: She wore her mass of jet black hair long and loose around her shoulders; splayed like seaweeds. Light brown eyes with flecks of gold in them- like a tiger, such lovely eyes, if not for the hard expression on them. An Anglo –Saxon woman carved out of sandalwood; all bronzed and tawny. Her features, fine and artistically pronounced. She was from a well moneyed family-a lady to the very tips of her smooth fingertips; an affluence that came from and can be traced back in British India. She was exotic and beautiful- a product of those English officers' bed-hopping days and dalliances with native women. She was exquisite in simple dresses and bewitching in Indian saris. Her charms are obvious enough for anyone with half an eye for beauty to see and it is no wonder why Arthur was captivated. He was enchanted by her; and her spell on him was potent enough that the womanizer that he was, he married her.

But tropical flowers such as her don't thrive in cold weather.

And I am all but left with the memory of her silks and satins.

I remember her father: Arthur Hellsing, the head of the powerful vampire hunting agency Hellsing was confined in his room that autumn. He was then starting to die, and he did die; slowly and painfully. He lay in his bed, the shell of the dashing young man he once was. His face was pallid and emaciated, dark crescents under his eyes; his once thick and glossy ash-blond hair not unlike his daughter, have turned gray overnight with his illness. He looked grotesque and ghoul-like. The boozing, chain-smoking womanizer that he was, done in by cancer at fifty-eight.

It was not venereal disease or lung cancer that killed him, it was leukaemia.

At his last moments he coughed pathetically and with his hacking up came blood; haemoptysis. He spat it on the white lacquered bowl that was kept by the nurses under his bed, a pool of ruby mess; bloody and disgusting.

I wondered what she might have done with it if she was there to see it, but as it turned out, she was sealed away down in the manor's sub-levels, strapped and bound tight.

Warsaw 1944: The buildings around us are, in varying degrees, all in some state of war-induced disrepair or dilapidation. I was fourteen and she was thirteen. Even in the field I was still wearing my suit and tie; the attire I always wear in the Arthur's manor, the uniform of a butler. She and I are trapped in the dead-end of an alley, before us are a horde of ghouls. She and I advanced, clearing our path off them; dismembered limbs, torsos and appendages littering along our way. I was young; my hair was black, my reflexes unnaturally fast and my body inhumanly flexible and agile. I flicked, whipped and snapped at the wires between my fingers mercilessly, efficiently felling the walking dead in quick succession. Adrenaline brought by the thrill of battle coursed through my veins heightening all of my senses; enhancing every move, every colour, and sound.

I've gone berserk and the task was done within a few moments, finished in a blur of quick movements. I was able to surface from the haze of bloodlust induced trance to see before me the vast expanse of an empty street.

I am suddenly aware of the warm stickiness in my body from my blood-drenched clothing. I turned towards my almost forgotten companion and was struck by the image of her I had confronted.

Her off-white dress had become a shade of vermillion, no doubt caused by all the blood from the melee; she could have ripped the ghouls apart by her bare hands for all I know.

Her long and straight black hair was still in place but her face….Oh God her luminously pale face: lips twisted in a manic grin, an unnervingly ugly expression in someone so young looking and innocent-even though I am very well aware that she does not, in any way fit in that description.

It contorted her lovely and girlish features; her red eyes glowed, making the slit pupils seem like tiny tongues of flames. She was bloody, looked hellish, and was undoubtedly a frightening sight to behold, yet in a strange way; very beautiful. I can never forget the sensation of gooseflesh erupting all over my skin which was brought about by all the hairs in my body standing in an end.

Reminiscences and fragmented recollections from many years ago, they surface and slice up on my consciousness like shards of broken glass. I have a lot of things I can remember, the contents of the decades of my existence so far. I can feel the weight of years in my body in a number of subtle ways. The creeping stiffness in my joints is by far, the worst. Yes, I am still sprightly despite my age, I can still wield my wires with deadly precision but my movements are getting slow.

I don't want my mind to be the next to slow down.

Most of the time, I feel like Methuselah himself; all the people I knew are dead, insane or old like me. It is dreadful being old. I never like admitting this to myself, more so to that damn vampire.

Strange, the memories that my mind conjures at this moment.

I look at Integra, still sitting with those inutile men. She sat in that table surrounded by men some more than half her age, poised like a cobra, ready to strike at anyone who dare oppose her. She will not tolerate any dilly-dallying from these lily-livered lackeys that England had the misfortune of having as knights. She will not have any of their cowardice. Her stubbornness and wilfulness could never be more in the right place, for at this time, she is definitely on the right.

They stared at her, and she stared back at each one of them back; giving them that look, a gaze that seem to come from a world of ice and snow.

The Ice queen, Iron maiden, Steel Virgin, The Holy Virgin of the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, Sir Hellsing.

My snow princess.

Sometimes, I have a hard time believing that she is Arthur's whelp. I never imagined he could produce someone like her.

Foolishly sentimental it may be, yet when she was very small; I hoped that one day she'll feel close enough to me, enough to think of me as another father even though she already has one.

She grew up, she's grown up so fast making her twenty two years of age seem immaterial to her.

In my mind I never call her master, I call her mistress.

For she is my mistress and will always be my lady. Left and right, People may address her Sir and call her master; and I too am no exception when speaking to her. But she will always be a woman to me.

Talk about frustration-and the desperation that comes with it.

Of contempt that breeds treachery.

Tonight-the night of war, conceived by a series of fortuitous events like Integra, bloody and grandiose like Alucard.

She is beautiful; I can see the shadow of her mother Elizabeth in her, dead these twenty one years. I think of her still, the coffee-cream skin she shared with her daughter, those piercing eyes that seem to go straight to your being.

Integra is clean; iridescent in her purity. Cold, distant and unreachable.

Like the moon.

Integra Fairbrooke Wingates Hellsing.

You deserve the service I gave you.


End file.
